


Museum

by dogandmonkeyshow



Series: Watson's Woes JWP 2017 fics [8]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, Museums, Wanton destruction of artefacts, casefic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-15
Updated: 2017-07-15
Packaged: 2018-12-02 07:03:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11504202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dogandmonkeyshow/pseuds/dogandmonkeyshow
Summary: Sherlock shares one of his favourite places in London with John.





	Museum

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Watson's Woes DW comm's July Writing Prompts daily challenge, prompt #8: Everyone loves sharing their expertise (All of us have something we've learned about or practiced a great deal. Whether it's knitting, or horseback-riding, or a particular performing group, use one of your own hobbies or interests as the inspiration for today's work. And don't forget to tell us what it is in the notes!)

The taxi pulled up in front of 13 Lincoln's Inn Fields; John followed Sherlock out onto the rainy pavement and under the police caution tape. To his surprise, the house had a sign next to the door: Sir John Soane's Museum. The name rang a bell, and while Sherlock verbally sparred with the constable in the doorway, John remembered where he knew the name from: the Carol Evans case the previous winter. Remembering some of the details of that case, John now knew why Sherlock had been so excited at Greg's call.

Once they'd finally made their way inside, John was struck by the gloom, and peering into the rooms off the narrow corridor, how unlike a “museum” it seemed. It was like walking into a posh house; there were no display cases, no labels, just lots of beautiful (and sometimes downright odd) things arranged as if people actually lived there and had just popped out to the shops after depositing a body in their basement.

“Why's it so bloody dark in here?” John glanced around, looking for a light switch.

“No artificial light. Soane left it to the nation with the proviso it remain unchanged. House, collection, displays, everything,” Sherlock replied over his shoulder as they joined Donovan at the top of a narrow, spiral staircase leading down. To John's relief, she said nothing, though she had her usual “not taking any shit from you today, freak” expression on. A newly-minted DI, she appeared to have at least enough appreciation of Sherlock's talents to allow Greg to call him in, even if her personal opinion of him didn't seen to have changed.

“When did he die, the 19th century?” John muttered as he inched his way down the stairs.

“Yes,” Sherlock replied from around the turn of the staircase.

When they reached the basement, John found an extraordinary sight: a dim Aladdin's cave of antiquities, sculptures, and what appeared to be random bits of old _stuff_ , barely lit by a skylight three stories up at the top of what he now saw was a light well that ran through the centre of the building to the roof.

Everything in the room was displayed on open shelves, or sitting precariously on slim pedestals arranged in rows, tucked in wherever there were a few inches of unused floorspace. The room was absolutely chock full, like a junk shop owned by someone with OCD and John's imagination provided him with the image of Sherlock's swirling Belstaff setting off a domino reaction that would take down the entire contents of the room the moment they stepped off the bottom stair. Except, of course, for the ancient Egyptian sarcophagus that held pride of place in the middle of the room, directly under the shaft of thin grey light from above. It looked as though someone had dropped a large pane of window glass on top of it and left the mess behind.

Braving the narrow aisles between displays, John sidled over to where Sherlock was arguing with Bartoli, the new pathologist.

“Why is there a sarcophagus in the basement?” John asked.

Sherlock turned to him. “What?”

“Why is there a sarcophagus?” he repeated, pointing at it.

“Because Soane wanted one, I presume.” Sherlock glanced at the glass on the floor. “Pity they broke the cloche; it was a marvel in its own right. One hundred and fifty years old; probably the largest Victoria bell cover in existence. Now—” He made a splaying motion with his hands and a “splwoosh” sound. “Now, as to lighting, we just have to make do with what we bring ourselves.” He pulled a flashlight out of his pocket and ran the tight beam over the surface of the sarcophagus and in Bartoli's eyes as she worked on her notes, earning Sherlock a scowl.

“All so someone could sleep in Seti's bed,” Bartoli added.

Looking closer, John could see that the lid of the sarcophagus was ajar; he deduced that that was the victim's location. “It'd take a big crew to shift that.” He nodded at the lid.

“Four men, probably. It's alabaster; not the heaviest stone around, but they would have had to lift it off and replace it without machinery. At least four men,” Sherlock muttered as he paced around the sarcophagus, crunching through the layers of broken glass on the floor.

A movement in the corner caught John's eye. In the gloom he hadn't seen the two men hovering in the far corner of the room. They looked like staff, anxious and obviously unhappy about outsiders messing with their stage setting. Eventually, Sherlock convinced them to help move the lid far enough so that he could peer inside at the body, which could barely be seen through the narrow opening. They spent ten minutes carefully moving some of the adjacent displays out of the way before helping John and Sherlock shift the lid as far as they could without it tipping over.

Bartoli wasn't gentle as she elbowed Sherlock out of the way to get to the body first, and John didn't bother suppressing a snort of amusement at Sherlock's unjustified affront.

“What do you see?” Sally asked from where she was standing at the foot of the staircase. John had forgotten about her entirely.

“Gunshot wounds. Two at least,” Bartoli replied. She glanced over to Sally. “Not shot here, of course. Almost no blood in the box, so he was dead long before he got here.”

Sherlock peered over the much shorter woman's shoulder as she stretched over the edge of the sarcophagus. She glanced up at him. “Give me a boost.”

“All right.”

“Madam, please,” one of the attendants protested, to no avail. Sherlock bodily lifted her and placed her inside the sarcophagus with the body.

“It's very clean in here,” she muttered as she crouched down. Sherlock, of course, had his magnifying glass out and was inspecting the rim of the sarcophagus, muttering to himself. Deciding that he was just getting in the way, John joined Sally, who was inspecting the floor of the corridor that led to the next room.

“Find anything?” he asked.

“Maybe.” She glanced up at him, then around at the chock-a-block, organised madness around them. “Whoever built this was as crazy as him,” she jerked her head towards where Bartoli and Sherlock had their heads bent together, obviously discussing something they'd found.

“Yeah, probably.”

“Almost makes me believe in reincarnation,” she said as she stood, brushing the knees of her trousers, then realising what she was doing and staring at her hands. “Holmes,” she called out, then joined the others in the larger gallery. She held out her hands for Sherlock's inspection.

He grabbed one of her wrists and pulled her hand up close, so that if she'd wanted to she could have tweaked his nose. Sherlock hummed as he tilted her hand to catch the light, then smiled one of his feral “aha!” smiles. “John,” he called as he swirled out of the room and up the staircase.

John shared a glance and a shrug with Donovan, then followed. When he returned to the main floor, here was no sight of Sherlock. He gave a questioning look to the constable on duty; she pointed upwards and John continued up the staircase to the first floor. He glanced around in the semi-darkness. “Sherlock!” he called out in recognition he'd never find the man in that warren.

A moment later, Sherlock's head appeared around a corner. “Picture gallery,” he said, before disappearing again.

 _Ah, the Carol Evans case_ , John realised as he trailed his friend through the tastefully-crammed corridors to the far end of the “house”. To his surprise there was an attendant waiting there, almost as if she were there solely to serve them.

The infamous picture gallery was smaller than John had imagined, and as they watched, the attendant folded back the layers of nested panels along two of the walls to reveal the niche where the last clue in the Evans case had been found. John knew nothing about art, though he recognised the Hogarths and gave them passing glances as the attendant revealed them, more to humour Sherlock than out of any real interest. Seeing Sherlock's obvious delight in the room and its contents was much more satisfying. He stood back while Sherlock and the attendant discussed various works in the room, and after about fifteen minutes, they left. 

As he followed Sherlock back down to the ground floor, John shared a deduction that had come to him as he'd watched. “This is your mind palace, isn't it?”

At the foot of the stairs, Sherlock stopped and turned and due to the height of the stair and the height difference between them, John had the strange and rare experience of Sherlock looking him straight in the eye as he replied. “What?”

John could tell he'd hit the nail on the head, though. “Your mind palace. You based it on this place, didn't you?”

Sherlock smiled one of his secretive little smiles. “With some additions from other places.”

“Thought so. Soon as I saw it, especially that room downstairs.”

“The crypt,” Sherlock corrected as they stepped out the door. To John's complete lack of surprise, a black cab pulled up in front of them. “Can you think of a better place to hide things?” Sherlock added as he opened the cab door, then stepped inside.

"Dead things?" John joked. When he was seated next to Sherlock he could see that it hadn't been taken that way.

"Apparently not."

During the short drive back to Baker Street, John wondered which of Sherlock's many ghosts had been buried in Seti I's sarcophagus.

**Author's Note:**

> So, the explanation for where this fic comes from...when deciding which interest to address when fulfilling the prompt, I decided on my decades-long interest in architecture. The location of this fic, Sir John Soane's Museum, is the former home of one of England's foremost Georgian architects. He left the house and all its contents to the nation, with the proviso that it be left exactly as it was at the time of his death. “Exactly as is” means the way his enormous collection of art, antiquities and curiosities were displayed and the configuration of his design office, so walking in feels just as if you're walking into someone's house, rather than a museum. As an aside, sort of a sub-interest of my interest in architecture, is a fascination with the homes architects design for themselves. When the architect is the client, you really get to see their work in its purest form and Soane appears to have been a fascinating man. A bit of an iconoclast, an early supporter (and friend) of Turner and a brilliant teacher, on top of being a wonderful and inventive architect. And the house/museum is a fantastic manifestation of this work. As you can probably tell, it's one of my favourite places in London. 
> 
> In a rather flagrant act of authorial self-insertion, I made it one of Sherlock's favourites as well in one of my previous fics (one of the cases he worked on is referred to in this fic). One of my favourite bits of headcanon is to think of 221B as a bit of an homage to 13 Lincoln's Inn Fields; if you ever get the chance to see it, I'd strongly recommend it and maybe you'll agree. Unfortunately, the museum has one of the worst-designed and uninformative websites I've ever encountered, so you won't see much, but at least it has a history of the house(es): http://www.soane.org/about/our-history
> 
> One item of note: I have tweaked the layout of the building a bit (for those of you familiar with it): I've moved the room with Seti's sarcophagus to the basement of no. 13; in reality it's in the basement of no. 12, and when you descend from the main floor there's at least one room you have to walk through to get to it.


End file.
